Virtually Dead

Chapter Eight

It was one of those classic Newport Beach sunsets that began with a reddening sun sinking beyond the mountains of Catalina, and ended with rivers of blood flowing around Balboa Island.

Angela stood on the terrace outside Michael’s office and gazed upon it with wonder. “I get great sunsets from my house, too,” she said. “But nothing like this. It’s the elevation you have here. It’s just spectacular. I feel house envy coming on.”

Michael emerged from the interior with a bottle of chilled chardonnay and two wine glasses that he set on the parapet to fill. He handed one to his therapist and they chinked. “We used to watch it almost every night when we were here. It was a kind of ritual. Sunset, sunrise. The best times of the day.”

They sipped in silence from their glasses, and she raised an eyebrow. “Mmmm. Wonderful wine. Toasted oak. Very subtle.”

“It’s a Bourgogne.”

“Oh? Is that in Napa or Sonoma?” But she could only hold her face straight for a moment, and he grinned.

Michael said, “Mora was something of a connoisseur. It was a kind of passion passed on by her husband. There wasn’t much she didn’t know about wine, and hardly any limit to what she would spend on it.” He shook his head. “Before she met Tom she hadn’t known the first thing about the stuff, except that she liked it. He was really well connected in the wine world, a friend of the Mondavi family. He used to take her to France and Italy and Spain, wine-tasting in all the best vineyards. Teaching her about the different varietals, the best vintages. How to smell a wine, how to taste it, how to differentiate the various flavours.”

He sipped thoughtfully on the buttery white chilled liquid and let it slip slowly over his tongue.

“There is a large wine cellar attached to the garage, kept at a constant 12 degrees centigrade. And she had a room in a wine storage facility in Newport. Between the two there must be thousands of bottles. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of wine.”

“Well, if you’re short of cash, Michael, why don’t you just sell it?”

“They won’t let me, until the question of inheritance has been settled in court.” He held up his glass to the sky and saw it flush pink in the sunset. “This is the first bottle I’ve opened since she died. But I don’t see any reason why it should be the last.” If he couldn’t sell it, he could at least drink it.

Angela slipped a hand around his upper arm and turned him gently toward the door. “Come on, let’s get started.”

She pulled up a chair beside him at the computer and told him to enter the Second Life URL. Up came the welcome page. A sequence of photographs of young, beautiful avatars in a variety of settings. An orange banner urged him to get started.

In the top left-hand corner of the screen was the Second Life logo. A pale green hand held up, palm facing out, fingers spread. It doubled cleverly as an eye, with the pupil in the centre of the palm, the raised fingers like eyelashes. Michael thought there was something familiar about it. He knew he must have seen it before. But where?

“Just click on the Get Started banner and you can choose a name.” Angela sipped on her wine as he followed her instructions and chose the surname Chesnokov. Something to do, perhaps, with his Eastern European ancestry. Then he tapped in C-H-A-S. Charles had been the name of his Scottish great grandfather. “Chas Chesnokov,” Angela said out loud. “I like the alliteration. Now you can choose your avatar.”

Michael chose a poser with a black shirt and charcoal jeans, and a mop of long, dark hair swept across his forehead. He clicked to the next page to activate his account.

It took only a few minutes for the software to download and establish its icon on his computer desktop. The small green hand/eye. He sat looking at it, that strange sense of familiarity striking him again, accompanied this time by an odd feeling of anticipation. This would, after all, be another world. A world he had never shared with Mora. A world where she had never existed and never would. A world where he could be someone else altogether. And there was a feeling of comfort in that, of freedom, and escape.

“Don’t go in right now.” Angela’s voice broke into his thoughts. “It’s a disorienting experience at first. It’s something you need to do alone. Set aside some time, and enjoy the experience.”

She drained her glass and stood up.

“I have to go. Let me know when you’re in and found your feet, and we’ll arrange a session. My AV name is Angel Catchpole. Do a search for me and send me an IM.”

Michael stood up. “IM?”

“Instant Message.” She smiled. “You’ll pick up the shorthand in no time. SL, Second Life: RL real life; OMG, WTF... ” He grinned and she said, “See? You’re catching on already.”

By the time she had gone, so had the light. Michael sat in the dark with the remains of Mora’s bottle, sipping on the wine she had so carefully chosen and never tasted. The computer screen cast a pale, ghostly light around the room. He turned toward it and wondered about taking his AV into Second Life straight away. But decided to do a little research first.

Google presented him with a choice of thousands of articles and blogs on SL. He picked a couple at random and set them to print, then searched his desk for his reading glasses. They were small, round tortoiseshell glasses that Mora had bought him. She said he would get prematurely wrinkled if he kept screwing his eyes up to read. He had never even noticed that he did. He had no idea what they might have cost, but Mora had expensive tastes. She would never buy anything at a knockdown price if there was something more expensive available. He hadn’t liked to tell her that he didn’t much care for them. Especially when she told him that they made him look cute, a young intellectual. And so he had kept his mouth shut and always used them when she was around.

Now he couldn’t do without them.

But he couldn’t find them anywhere. They were nowhere to be seen on the desktop, and not in any of the drawers. He frowned, wondering where else in the house he might have laid them down. He had just stood up to go and look when the phone rang. He checked the time. It was after eight. The Caller ID panel told him it was his office. He lifted the phone and hit the green button.

“Yeh, it’s Michael.”

He wandered off into the hallway. Lamps in the courtyard, operating on a timer, spilled light through all the glass into the front of the house. He headed for the kitchen, wondering if he had laid his glasses down in there.

“Mike we got a shooting in Laguna Beach. One fatality. There’s a team on the way. Can you meet up with them?”

“Sure. What’s the address?” He switched on the kitchen lights and blinked in the sudden brightness. Then froze where he stood as the dispatcher read out the name and number of the street.

“Fuck,” he said. And his voice was smothered by the emptiness of the house. “That’s where Janey lives.”